


Take a Little Step

by samalander



Category: Community
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M, Yuletide 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:25:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Troy and Abed and Annie in the bedroom! (Or, how Troy and Abed asked Annie to join them, and how she figured out that it was okay to say yes.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take a Little Step

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gorgeous Nerd (gorgeousnerd)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeousnerd/gifts).



> gorgeousnerd, I hope you enjoy this! I've never written Community before, but I really enjoyed writing it for you. Happy holidays!
> 
> "You take a little step and then it feels like love/I think I better get a little of it in me"
> 
>  
> 
> (With thanks to Kitty and R. and Lar for the beta reading.)

All truths told, even without being allowed to join in all their games, Annie finds that living with Troy and Abed is easy. If someone asked, which no one does, of course, she would tell them that it was like being home, but the more she thinks about that sentence, the more she realizes that "home" was something she stopped knowing about when she was six and had her first panic attack over the order of her crayons.

Still, Abed likes order as much as she does - as long as it's his order, which isn't always the same kind of order Annie knows, but they're making it work - and Troy is familiar and sweet, and not at all the guy she thought he was in high school, or when they started at Greendale.

It's not all perfect - they don't let her rap with them, but she figures that'll come when it comes. (She has June 5th marked on her calendar, but it's in pencil. Britta told her that flexibility is a learned skill, and she chooses to believe it.)

It doesn't take long for Annie to figure out what Troy and Abed get up to in their bunk beds at night. Honestly, they don't have walls, and sometime in the first week she wakes to a soft sigh and a high-pitched whine and she knows that sound, knows it because she's heard it before, from the alley outside Dildopolis. 

(And she almost remembers, almost but not really, the sticky sound of flesh on flesh, that night in high school, and the sweet little whine Vaughn made when she got brave and traced the finger up his thigh, and she's not scandalized, just surprised that they kept it secret so long.)

She doesn't say anything the next day, or the next week, or the next month. In fact, sex doesn't get discussed until Abed makes her watch all four _Die Hard_ movies for Christmas because he finds out she's never seen them.

They actually make it to the fourth, which Annie would like to keep calling _Die Harder Again One More Time_ but Abed kept _looking_ at her in this weird way that she thinks is probably a sign of imminent shutdown, so she stops. Just in case.

"Do you still want to have sex with Troy?" he asks, as Bruce Willis and Maggie Q start exchanging blows and Annie sputters.

"I never -- Abed! What?"

"We had sex that time, during dungeons and dragons," Abed says, pausing the movie, and Annie kind of wishes he would go back to gazing lovingly at Justin Long, but he doesn't. He just watches her, in the way he has that makes her feel like a lab rat.

"That wasn't sex. That was a-- that was talking."

"Right, like sexting, but we were there. That's sex, just, different sex."

Annie stares at him with her jaw dropped. She considers making Disney eyes, but it seems foolish to even attempt to feign innocence on this one. He's not wrong, per se, it's just _weird_.

"So Troy and I were talking, and we thought that if you wanted to, we would totally have sex with you."

And now it's weirder.

"Abed, I--"

He nods. "You're uncomfortable with the idea of ruining our friendship."

And it's not even that. Well, it is that. But it's also the idea of a threesome seems somehow disorderly, maybe, or messy or--

"You're upset," Abed says.

"I'm-- confused," she counters. "I thought- are you two boyfriends? Because that's adorable."

"We're... something," Abed answers, "The Inspector and Reggie, or Kirk and Spock. No, Legolas and Gimli. I'm Gimli." 

"Okay," Annie nods slowly. "So you're a dwarf and an elf who kill things?"

"We're watching Lord of the Rings when this is done," Abed says, and she can almost feel him adding that to a list in his head. She decides to distract him with food or something shiny or Troy, because four movies is enough for one day.

"Right, but, the sex thing?"

Abed shrugs. "I care about Troy, you know that, and I care about you, but I'm not stupid, Annie. I can't-- I'm never going to be his Princess, never going to know how to give him the things he needs."

Annie doesn't say anything about B-Bed the Emotionally Unavailable Unicorn, but she knows that they're both thinking about that first puppet show, the one where Woodsman Troy and Princess Annie kissed at the end, which had seemed weird to her at the time, but maybe they've always been working towards this, maybe this has always been what Troy and Abed wanted. Maybe they always wanted her.

"You want me to give them to him," she says, more as a statement than any kind of question, and Abed nods.

"Troy needs feelings," he says, and Annie gets it. Kinda. "And he needs more than I can-- you know."

Annie nods. "I think-- I think so, maybe?"

Abed quirks his lips upwards, a thin parody of a smile that she knows is an affect, one that he's cultivated to show the group. "So, do you want to--"

"Yes," She says it with power, with a sureness she doesn't feel. "So long as you and Troy want it, and it doesn't change-- us."

She half expects Troy to burst out of the blanket fort, crowing triumphantly, but he doesn't appear, and Abed nods again. "Cool," he says, "Cool cool cool."

He presses play on the remote, and Bruce Willis kicks Maggie Q down the elevator shaft to her doom and Annie wonders, vaguely, if this is a metaphor for what she's in for, but she's pretty sure Abed isn't that subtle.

At least, she hopes he's not.

* * *

Annie expects planning - a spreadsheet, maybe, of times and places and positions - but that's not really how Troy and Abed work. So after the holidays, when things have calmed down from the Glee Club thing and she's coiled the lights neatly back in their boxes, she decides to make one herself.

Except she realizes about three minutes into the exercise that she has no idea what kind of spreadsheet one goes about making for a threesome with your best friends-slash-roommates.

Troy is in the living room, watching football and knitting, which he says improves his hand-eye coordination, but she's pretty sure he just likes make socks.

"Abed talked to me," she says, by way of hello, and Troy jumps a little before turning to look at her. 

"What?" 

"About the sex thing."

He starts to stand, and then sits again, twisting his body at an uncomfortable angle to look at her. "Abed talked to you about the sex thing," Troy repeats, and grins. "Did you say yes?"

Annie nods, and Troy's smile is so wide and bright that her heart hurts and she doesn't know what to do.

"He didn't tell you?"

"He told me," Troy says, dismissing the question with a wave of his hand. "But it's so much cooler to hear you say it. You want to do it? Really?"

"Really. But," she takes a breath and moves to join him, perching on the edge of the other armchair. "I can't figure out how it's going to work," she says. "I mean, I've done some research and there are _ways_ but it's us and-- how do you want this to work?"

Troy puts his knitting on the table and mutes the TV before he turns to look at her. "Honestly? You're our Annie. We want this to make you happy."

"You do make me happy," she says, and it feels a little after-school-special, like one of Jeff's speeches.

"Yeah, but like," he makes a face that she thinks might be concern, and he gets a little wrinkle between his eyebrows that she used to think was so cute. It's still cute, and she still kind of wants to kiss it, but there aren't rules yet, there aren't guidelines, and she doesn't know if kissing it would be okay, what Abed would think when he found out. "Really happy. Football happy. Kickpuncher happy. Inspector Spacetime happy."

Annie frowns. "I don't know what that means," she says, which makes her feel dumb because if she's going to date these guys, she should at least know what _Kickpuncher happy_ means.

Troy thinks for a moment. "Abed is my, you know, we're like Bastien and Atreyu or Goose and Maverick--"

"He's the Gimli to your Legolas," she cuts across him. "He told me that."

"He said I was Legolas?" He grins again, and she doesn't think she'll ever get enough of that smile. "Bad ass."

"But those are two people, all of them. It's not Gimli and Legolas and Annie."

"They had Aragorn with them."

"So not the point, Troy. Where do I-- fit? In the whole thing?"

Troy sneaks a glance at the TV, which makes Annie want to kill him a little because really, Troy, this is a serious conversation and not time to see how the Seahawks are doing.

"I don't know," he says after a minute. "You could be the Jesse to our Buzz and Woody, or you could be the Bo Peep. Or Slinky Dog. Wait, no, I want to be Slinky Dog. You can be Rex."

"Troy. Focus."

"Right, sorry. I mean, it comes down to what you want, and what we want, and we're not going to know until we try, right?"

Annie nods. "I've never-- outside a relationship. I think I'd need--" she sighs. "Do you think you and Abed are looking for a girlfriend?"

Troy cocks his head to the side and stares at her for a long minute. "What else would we be looking for?"

She shrugs. "I don't know, a one-time thing? I don't want to be your one-time thing."

"I'm not Jeff," Troy says, and he almost looks upset at the idea of it. 

"No," Annie agrees. "But we still need rules."

Troy nods, and then shrugs. "Like what?"

"Like what do we tell the group? Like how do we act when we're not _doing it _? Like what if one of us wants to _stop___ doing it?"

Troy is silent for a long moment, and then he tilts his head back, opens his mouth, and yells. "ABED!"

The door to the Dreamatorium cracks open, and Abed's head pops out. "Troy?"

"Annie wants to make sex rules."

Abed steps out of the Dreamatorium, closing the door with a kind of acute precision that makes Annie wonder if he's afraid something might follow him.

"What kind of sex rules?"

Annie blows out a breath that she thinks makes her sound like a horse. "The kind that will stop us from getting hurt!"

"It's sex, Annie," Abed says, and she feels about three inches tall with the tone he's using. "You can set out rules if you want, but in the moment, it's more like Calvinball. Sometimes you're going to trip into the backwards zone."

"That's not okay," she says, squaring her shoulders, which has the added benefit of distracting Troy, because boobs. "I need to know things, like what if you're not here and I want to kiss Troy's eyebrows?"

Abed looks up and to the left, and Annie imagines a series if green numbers scrolling in front of his face, like she's the glitch in the Matrix.

"Okay," he says, "we can make rules. Rule number one: we have to talk about things if they're not working."

A grin splits Annie's face, and she practically leaps out if the chair, 

"Hold on!" she takes a few steps towards her room. "Let me get my laptop."

* * *

The rules of the relationship, which Annie prints and laminates for each of them to keep in their pockets, are as follows:

1\. _All rules are subject to change by a 2/3 majority vote at the monthly State of the Relationship meeting._  
2\. _For the duration of the arrangement, all parties involved agree that they are in a relationship and are therefore boyfriends and girlfriend._  
3\. _The group doesn't get to know. Especially Shirley. And Pierce. And Jeff._  
4\. _All costumes must be agreed upon ahead of time._  
5\. _Troy can be Slinky Dog._  
6\. _If at any time a participant wishes to leave the arrangement, they may do so by making a verbal declaration._  
7\. _Participants agree that they are best friends, and will remain so._  
8\. _Affectionate gestures are allowed in the absence of a member._  
9\. _Thursday and Sunday are movie nights. Sex has to wait until after the movie._  
10\. _If food is used in sex, nothing that will stain can be in Annie's bedroom._  
11\. _Dreamatorium sex by appointment only._

* * *

Their first time is awkward, not so much because of the sex, but because there are a lot of arms and legs and they get tangled and trip. Annie and Troy end up laughing a lot, both because they're nervous and because, well, sex is hilarious. Abed applies himself to the task of sex with the same concentration that he does to Star Wars and Pulp Fiction, the kind of laser intensity that makes Annie feel like she's the only person in the world who matters when they're not in bed, but mostly makes her feel self-conscious and weird when she's naked. But she sees why Troy is addicted to it, the total immersion Abed gives when he's loving her, the way the world reorients through his view so it's only the three of them, only in this moment.

They work it out, and the next time is easier, and the time after that is better still, and before Annie knows it, she's been dating Troy and Abed for a whole month and they get through the first State of the Relationship meeting with no problems and to celebrate, Troy goes down on her until she's panting and clutching at his hair while Abed alternates between whispering filthy compliments to Annie and slipping his fingers into Troy with a wicked glee that makes Troy gasp and shudder between Annie's legs.

She comes twice - which is nothing short of miraculous, because usually relaxing enough to do it once takes most of the evening - and then watches through half-lidded eyes and touches herself lazily as Abed fucks Troy with a tenderness she associates with her boys, a kind of sweet love she doesn't know how to express, pulling those soft sighs and high-pitched whines from him like that first week, when Annie first heard them.

Afterwards, sated, they lie together with their legs tangled, Annie in the middle with her men on either side, their faces pressed into her shoulders and their fingers intertwined on her stomach.

Annie stares at the ceiling of the blanket fort, redolent like a queen on a pile of pillows, pampered and loved and cared for. Troy snores softly once, twice, and Abed mutters nonsense syllables in reply, and she knows they're asleep. She closes her eyes, though she's not tired, and mentally adds her own vanity rule to the contract, to match five and nine.

12\. _Annie loves Troy and Abed._

She presses a kiss to each of their foreheads and slowly extracts herself from their embraces, doing her best not to wake them, but she's sticky and badly needs a shower and she should do homework for Biology and make dinner and, well, the million other things on her list.

The water pulses cold for a moment and she steps under it as it starts to warm. The hot water fogs up the bathroom mirror, and she can see through the shower curtain where someone -probably Troy - has drawn a heart on it with their finger. 

Inside the heart, the person wrote T+A+A, and Annie feels her own heart swell a little. The others will wake up soon, and she can tell them about rule 12 then. 

But, she thinks, staring at the heart on the mirror, its possible they already know.


End file.
